11/22/2002 @ 3:15PM

Wang's Legacy: Sex, Lies And Litigation

What began as a storybook romance more than 50 years ago concluded this week in a sordid tale of lies, lust and murder that may jeopardize part of the fortune of Hong Kong’s richest woman,
Nina
Wang
Nina Wang
.

A Hong Kong judge ruled on Thursday that the pigtailed and fashionably overstated Wang, known as “Little Sweetie,” most likely forged her late husband’s 1990 will. If the ruling stands after an appeal,
Teddy
Wang
Teddy Wang
‘s father will control the $128 million estate, as instructed by a 1968 will.

“All we can say is two simple things: The judgement was a surprise and we will definitely be appealing,” says Jennifer Milford, a spokeswoman for Nina Wang’s law firm,
Johnson Stokes & Master
.

Even if the appeal fails, the bulk of Nina’s $2.4 billion estimated fortune will remain intact, unless authorities can prove that she used money from the estate to buy her controlling stake in
Chinachem Group
, Hong Kong’s largest private property developer and the linchpin of her wealth.

Now that the probate case is finished, police are reportedly resuming a criminal investigation into the forgery that was started when Nina Wang’s 91-year-old father-in-law first filed a complaint about the will.

Legal questions may linger, but one thing remains certain: The legal bloodletting between Nina and her father-in-law,
Wang
Din-shin
Wang Din-shin
, will forever mar Asia’s 25th largest fortune and make for tabloid fodder. The 171-day trial revealed a saga of love, adultery, deceit, kidnapping and murder.

The relationship between Nina Wang and Teddy Wang reportedly began in 1948. Teddy, the 18-year-old son of a hotel developer father, began a seven-year courtship of the 13-year-old Nina that resulted in their marriage in Hong Kong.

Teddy made a fast fortune in pharmaceuticals and vinyl, and by 1960 began dabbling in property. His Chinachem Group soon became a powerful real estate company, and the couple was considered part of the Hong Kong glitterati by the early 1980s.

In 1983, however, the storybook romance began its public unraveling when, on April 12, the couple’s Mercedes was hijacked. Teddy Wang was bound and gagged and blindfolded. He was later chained to a bed for eight days until Nina Wang paid an $11 million ransom. On April 20 the kidnappers freed Teddy, leaving him in an iron box by the side of the road.

The gang was tracked down and sentenced. But seven years later, on April 10, 1990, Teddy Wang was kidnapped again while driving home in the same Mercedes.

The kidnappers disposed of the car and took Wang out to sea on a sampan, a small Chinese boat. They dumped him, gagged and bound, into the sea. His body has never been found.

After the disappearance, Nina Wang took control of Chinachem. In 1999 a court officially declared Teddy Wang dead. His father, Wang Din-shin, then asked the courts to accept Teddy’s 1968 will that made Din-shin the sole heir to his son’s estate. Din-shin said the 1968 will was drafted after Teddy Wang hired a private detective to prove that Nina was cheating on him with a warehouse manager. It replaced a 1960 will that gave Nina Wang and Din-shin equal shares in the estate.

Nina also produced a will. She claims it was written in March 1990, one month before Teddy Wang disappeared. The 1990 homemade will leaves Teddy Wang’s entire estate to Nina.

“No financial or property interests can go to anyone from my family, the Wangs. They have all been disappointing,” the 1990 will read. It ended with a handwritten love note that read, “One life, one love.” Nina filed the will in 1999. Din-shin immediately lodged a police report claiming it was forged, and the probate battle began.

It ended this week when the presiding judge,
David
Yam
David Yam
, issued a 500-page judgment discrediting the 1990 will. Yam said Teddy Wang would have never written a will without lawyers and that there was no evidence to show he was a romantic man who would have written such a note. Handwriting experts testified that the 1990 document was written as late as 1996.

But Nina Wang wasn’t the only one to have her reputation tarnished. Evidence showed that Teddy Wang’s father smoked opium and had a mistress. And it was proven that Teddy Wang himself had an affair in 1968. When his safety deposit box was opened after his disappearance, photos of “certain ladies” were also discovered.

Nina Wang did not testify and has instructed her lawyers not to comment on any details regarding the case.

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